rheomode

Architecture and Cybernetics: A Critical Ecology of Extended Mind

(supervisors: Murray Fraser and David Cunningham)

Contents

1. A Relational Theory of Architecture: An Introduction and Conclusion

1.1 Architecture and Systems Theory

Fig. 1.1-1.2. Alberti: Architecture as an abstract study of whole/part relations

1.2 Dialectics and Systems Theory

1.3 A Dialectical Method: Space, Time and Internal Relations

1.4 Relational Spacetime

Fig. 1.3 and 1.4. David Harvey: Space as a Keyword matrix

1.5 A Relational Theory of Architecture

1.6 The Plan of this Work

2 Organon and the Production of Nature

2.1 Introduction

2.1 The Ideological Language of Sustainability

2.2 The Relation to Nature

Fig. 2.1-2.7. Architecture and the Relation to Nature

Fig. 2.8-2.14. Extended Phenotypes, Metabolic Interfaces and The Production of Nature

2.3 Organic, Organism, Organisation

Fig. 2.15-2.17 Organon

2.4 Socio-Political conceptions of the Organic

Fig. 2.18-2.20. Haeckel

2.5 Organicism, Wholeness, Process and Systems

Fig. 2.21-2.23. Wholeness and the Implicate Order: “more like quantum organism than quantum mechanics”

Fig. 2.24-.2.29 Self Organising Patterns of Matter: Far from Equilibrium Systems and the Timing of Space

3 Dialectical Ecology: Towards a Critical Metabolics

3.1 A Dialectical approach to Organism

3.2 A Labour Theory of Cognition

3.3 Technological Metabolisms

3.4 Organic Architecture and Urbanism

Fig. 3.1-3.5. Organic Architectures

Fig.3.6. Macroscopes

3.5 Ecology, Organism and Metabolism

3.6 Ecology: An Economics of Nature?

Fig.3.7-3.9. Ecological Mappings: Abstracting Flows

3.7 Ecology: An Epistemology of Dwelling?

Fig. 3.10-3.12. Gaia: An Ecology of Mind?

4 Cybernetics and Systems Theory

4.1 Pattern and Matter

4.2 Systems and Networks

Fig. 4.1. Networks and Internal Relations

Fig. 4.2-4.5 Network Structures

Fig. 4.6 Systems Dynamics

4.3 The Emergence of Cybernetics

Fig. 4.7-4.9 The Cybernetic Arts of “Ontological Theatre”

Fig. 4.10-4.15 Paskian Conversations with Gaudi

Fig. 4. 16-18 Architecture and Deuterolearning

4.4 First Order Cybernetics and the Macy Conferences 1947-53

Fig. 4.19 – 4.20 Macy Conferences

4.5 The Ratio Club

Fig. 4.21-4.23 Walterian Beings

Fig. 4.24-4.26 Turing and Ashby: Computation and Self-Regulation

4.6 Key Concepts and Critiques that emerged from Macy

Fig 4.27-4.29 Feedback Systems

Fig. 4.30-4.31 Architecture, Cybernetics and Instrumentality

4.7 Second Order Cybernetics

Fig. 4.32 On the Shoulders of Giants

Fig. 4.33 The Cybernetics of Cybernetics

4.8 Gregory Bateson: Patterns that Connect Ecologies of Mind

Fig. 4.34-4.36 William Bateson and Chladni Figures

Fig. 4.37-4.39 Information and Symmetry Breaking

Fig. 4.40-4.45 The Lives of Gregory Bateson

Fig. 4.46-4.47 Ecological Aesthetics

Fig. 4.48-4.58 Design Research: Video Feedback as Rhythmanalysis

5. Ecologies of Extended Minds

5.1 Dualist Legacies

5.2 Ideology – A Materialism of the Mind

5.3 Gregory Bateson and the Cybernetics of Mind

5.4 The Nature of Mind

5.5 Embodied Mind

5.6 Theories of Extended Mind

Fig. 5.1-5.3 Rupert Sheldrake’s Extended Mind

5.7 The Extended Mind of Clark and Chalmers

5.8 The Embodiment of Concepts

Fig. 5.1-5.3 Top-Down Computation vs Morpho-Ecological Dynamic Passive Systems

5.9 Emergence, Process and Dialectics

Fig. 5.1-5.3 Emergent Form in Architectural Research

5.10 Ecologies of Extended Mind

Fig. 5.xx Design Research: The Extended Mind of Open Tables: Socio-Spatial Interaction in the Presence of Information.

6 Bodies and the Timing of Space: The Architecture of Cognitive Mapping

6.1 Mind and Ecology

6.2 The Architecture of the Brain

Fig. 6.1-6.5 Cerebral Structures

6.3 Embodied Brains

6.4 Cognitive Maps

6.5 Penfield Maps

Fig. 6.6-6.8 Penfield Sensory and Motor Mappings

Fig. 6.9 Ur-maps in the Cerebellum

6.6 Visual and Kinaesthetic Maps

Fig. 6.10-12 Bringing Forth their World: The Sensori-Motor Maps of Non-Human Species

Fig. 6.13-16 Paul Bach-y-Rita and Sensory Plasticity

6.7 The Mind’s I

6.8 Pathological Mappings

Fig. 6.17-19 Recursive Body Maps?

Fig. 6.20-21 How to have an Out of Body Experience

6.9 Peripersonal Space

Fig. 6.22-24 Imaging Peripersonal Space

Fig. 6.25-26 Esoteric Mappings of Interoceptive, Proprioceptive, Somasensory and Peripersonal spaces

6.10 Tools and the Extensions of Peripersonal Space

Fig. 6.27-32 Extending the Body

6.11 Architecture as a Dissociative Mapping

Fig. 6.33-35 Nomadic Spatiality and the Experience of Peripersonal Fields

Fig. 6.36-38 Modern Nomads and Bubbles of Space

6.12 Extrapersonal Space and Affordances

6.13 An Affordance based Theory of Architectural Pattern and Decoration

Fig. 6.39-53 The Cognitive Maps of Architectural Form

6.14 Mirror Neurons and Empathy

6.15 Grid Cells, Place Cells and Entoptic Pattern Projection

Fig. 6.54- 60 ‘Let’s get these stones organised!’

6.16 Embodiments of Mind

7 Aesthetics, Technology, and the Spirit of Matter

7.1 Empathy, Mind and Aesthetics

7.2 Empathy and Spatial Prosthesis

7.3 Space and Mimesis

7.4 Pantheism and the Young Hegelians

7.5 Global Networks: Making the Invisible Visible

Fig. 7.1-7.4 Electronic Empathy

Fig. 7.5-7.7 Pantheistic images within contemporary culture

7.6 Empathising with Abstraction – Metropolis and Mind

7.7 Network Spatiality

Fig. 7.8-7.11 Network Imaginaries

Fig. 7.12-7.18 Immersion in Networks

Fig. 7.19-7.25 Network Imaginaries 2

7.8 Ecological Empathy

8 Ecological Cybernetics: Architecture and ‘The Environmental Question’

8.1 Marx and Ecology

8.2 Architecture and Cybernetics

8.3 An Ontology of Becoming

8.4 Urban Political Ecology and Radical Cybernetics

Fig 8. Cybersyn, Stafford Beer, Biological Computing and Viable Systems

8.5 Capitalism and Planetary Pathology

8.6 Sustainability and Green Capitalism

8.7 Systems theory and environmental politics

Fig 8. Athens Tower of Winds

8.8 Ecological Aesthetics: A Critical Metabolics

Appendix 1: The Environmental Question: A Summary of Environmental Data